Field effect transistors (FETs) are widely used in the electronics industry for switching, amplification, filtering, and other tasks related to both analog and digital electrical signals. Most common among these are metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors (MOSFETs), wherein a gate or electrode is energized to create an electric field in a channel region of a semiconductor body, by which electrons or holes are allowed to travel through the channel between a source region and a drain region of the semiconductor body. The source and drain regions are typically formed by adding dopants to targeted regions on either side of the channel. A gate dielectric (insulator) or gate oxide is formed over the channel, and a gate electrode or gate is formed over the gate dielectric. The gate dielectric and gate electrode layers are then patterned to form a gate structure overlying the channel region of the substrate.
In operation of the resulting MOS transistor, the threshold voltage (Vt) is the gate voltage value required to render the channel conductive by formation of an inversion layer at the surface of the semiconductor channel. Complimentary MOS (CMOS) devices have become widely used in the semiconductor industry, wherein both n-channel and p-channel (NMOS and PMOS) transistors are utilized to fabricate logic and other circuitry. For enhancement-mode (e.g., normally off) devices the threshold voltage Vt is positive for NMOS and negative for PMOS transistors. In other words, a type of device where there are no charge carriers in the channel when the gate source voltage is zero. The threshold voltage is dependent upon the flat-band voltage, and the flat-band voltage depends on the work function difference between the gate and the substrate materials, as well as on surface charge.
The work function of a material is a measure of the energy required to move an electron in the material outside of a material atom from the Fermi level, and is usually expressed in electron volts (eV). For CMOS products, it is desirable to provide predictable, repeatable, and stable threshold voltages (Vt) for the NMOS and PMOS transistors. To establish Vt values, the work functions of the PMOS and NMOS gate and the corresponding channel materials are independently tuned or adjusted through gate and channel engineering, respectively.
Gate engineering is employed in combination with channel engineering to adjust the work function of the gate materials, where different gate work function values are set for PMOS and NMOS gates. The need to independently adjust PMOS and NMOS gate work functions has made polysilicon attractive for use as a gate material in CMOS processes, since the work function of polysilicon can be easily raised or lowered by doping the polysilicon with p-type or n-type impurities, respectively. The PMOS polysilicon gates are typically doped with p-type impurities and NMOS gate polysilicon is doped with n-type dopants, typically during implantation of the respective source/drain regions following gate patterning. In this way, the final gate work functions are typically near the Si conduction band edge for NMOS and near the valence band edge for PMOS. The provision of dopants into the polysilicon also has the benefit of increasing the conductivity of the gate. Polysilicon has thus far been widely using in the fabrication of CMOS devices, wherein the gate engineering (e.g., implants) are conventionally tuned to provide a desired gate conductivity (e.g., sheet resistance value), and the threshold voltage fine tuning is achieved by tailoring the Vt adjust implants to change the channel work function.
FIG. 1 illustrates a conventional CMOS fabrication process 100 beginning at 102, in which front end processing is performed at 104, including well formation and isolation processing. At 106 and 108, channel engineering is performed (e.g., Vt, adjust, punch-thru, and channel stop implants) for NMOS and PMOS regions, respectively. A thin gate dielectric and an overlying polysilicon layer are formed at 110 and 112, respectively, and the polysilicon is patterned at 114 to form gate structures for the prospective NMOS and PMOS transistors. The gate structures are then encapsulated at 116, typically through oxidation, and lightly-doped drain (LDD) implants are performed at 118 to provide n-type dopants to prospective source/drains of the NMOS regions and p-type dopants to source/drains of the PMOS regions, using the patterned gate structures and isolation structures as an implantation mask. Sidewall spacers are then formed at 120 along the lateral sidewalls of the gate structures.
At 122, the PMOS source/drain regions and the PMOS polysilicon gate structures are implanted with p-type dopants to define the PMOS source/drains, and to render the PMOS gates conductive. Similarly, the NMOS source/drain regions and the NMOS polysilicon gate structures are implanted at 124 with n-type dopants, to defining the NMOS source/drains and rendering the NMOS gates conductive. Thereafter, the source/drains and gates are silicided at 126 and back end processing (e.g., interconnect metallization, etc.) is performed at 128, before the process 100 ends at 130. In the conventional process 100, the channel engineering implants at 106 and 108 shift the work functions of the PMOS and NMOS channel regions, respectively, to compensate for the changes in the PMOS and NMOS polysilicon gate work functions resulting from the source/drain implants at 122 and 124, respectively. In this manner, the desired work function difference between the gates and channels may be achieved for the resulting PMOS and NMOS transistors, and hence the desired threshold voltages.
The gate dielectric or gate oxide between the channel and the gate is an insulator material, typically SiO2, nitrided SiO2 or other dielectrics that operate to prevent large currents from flowing from the gate into the channel when a voltage is applied to the gate electrode. The gate dielectric also allows an applied gate voltage to establish an electric field in the channel region in a controllable manner. Continuing trends in semiconductor product manufacturing include reduction in electrical device feature sizes (scaling), as well as improvements in device performance in terms of device switching speed and power consumption. MOS transistor performance may be improved by reducing the distance between the source and the drain regions under the gate electrode of the device, known as the gate or channel length, and by reducing the thickness of the layer of gate oxide that is formed over the semiconductor surface.
However, there are electrical and physical limitations on the extent to which SiO2 gate dielectrics can be made thinner. These include gate leakage currents tunneling through the thin gate oxide, limitations on the ability to form very thin oxide films with uniform thickness, and the inability of very thin nitrided SiO2 gate dielectric layers to prevent dopant diffusion from the gate polysilicon into the underlying channel. Accordingly, recent scaling efforts have focused on high-k dielectric materials having dielectric constants greater than that of nitrided SiO2, which can be formed in a thicker layer than scaled nitrided SiO2, and yet which produce equivalent field effect performance. A thicker high-k dielectric layer can thus be formed to avoid or mitigate tunneling leakage currents, while still achieving the required electrical performance equivalent (e.g., capacitance value) to a thinner nitrided SiO2.
It has also been proposed to utilize two dissimilar metals for the gates; however, this approach is difficult to integrate. There are often adhesion problems associated with the two metals. There are also problems etching two dissimilar metals to form the transistor gates. There have been recent advances in fully silicided gates (FUSI) as an option for metal gate integration to achieve transistor performance while scaling down to 45 nm and below. Undoped Ni FUSI has a mid-gap work function which is not suitable for high-performance CMOS applications. Implant doped Ni FUSI has shown n-type and p-type work functions within 200 mV of band edge. However, high-performance CMOS requires band edge work functions. With the relatively thick gate dielectrics and gate structures of the past, polysilicon depletion was not critical to ensuring desired device performance. However, as gate dielectrics and gate continue to become smaller through scaling, the polysilicon depletion problem is more pronounced, wherein polysilicon depletion regions of 3 to 4 angstroms become a significant fraction of the overall effective gate capacitance. Thus, while polysilicon gate have previously offered flexibility in providing dual work functions for CMOS processes, the future viability of conventional polysilicon gate technology is lessened as scaling efforts continue. Accordingly, attention has recently been directed again to the possibility of using metal gates in CMOS products. There remains a need for dual or differentiated work function capability (e.g., for PMOS and NMOS transistors) in CMOS processes. In this regard, metal work functions are not shifted as easily by the same amounts as was the case for polysilicon.
Accordingly, there is a need for improved CMOS transistor gate designs and fabrication techniques by which the benefits of scaling can be achieved while avoiding or mitigating the poly depletion degradation found in conventional devices and without increasing equivalent oxide thickness (EOT).